Colonial League football teams losing numbers game

By Tom HousenickOf The Morning Call

Wednesday

Nov 27, 2013 at 12:01 AMNov 27, 2013 at 9:00 PM

Catasauqua’s Tom Falzone and Bangor counterpart Donnie Hawk took part in the coaching tradition of meeting at midfield about 90 minutes before their teams’ Oct. 4 football game at Bangor Memorial Park.

In addition to the usual small talk, their conversation headed toward what is becoming a recent Colonial League trend. They discussed the odds of playing Monday’s junior varsity game.

Each coach essentially fired a warning shot.

“You have to count the numbers on Saturday morning,” Falzone said. “See who is hurt, how many are available.”

The Catasauqua-Bangor JV game was not played. Neither was the Rough Riders’ scheduled JV contest the following Monday against Pen Argyl, nor Bangor’s JV game against Slate Belt rival Pen Argyl.

It was that Monday when Hawk explained to a Bangor parent just how bad the situation was.

“I told a mother that we couldn’t even play a baseball game,” said Hawk, who is in his first season in charge of his alma mater. “We only had eight (available) players.”

Catasauqua and Pen Argyl canceled entire JV schedules in recent years. Several others, including Salisbury, Wilson and Palisades, have canceled one or more JV games this season.

The reason is the same: Lack of players.

It is a league-wide epidemic, with most of the teams finishing the varsity season with 30-some varsity players. It is from those 30-some players that a coach must find about 15 who don’t start on the varsity level and aren’t seniors to form a JV squad.

Some schools also have numbers issues on the junior high/middle school levels.

It adds up to a growing concern for the future of the sport in the Colonial League.

“There are going to be schools that stop playing football,” Palisades coach Kevin Ronalds said. “I don’t know if it is going to happen (in the Colonial League), but it’s going to happen soon.”

A cultural thing

Few things get Ronalds as upset as the excuses children and their parents have for not playing football. He believes it is a good building block for a young man.

“I don’t understand how kids would not want to do something that keeps them busy for 20 hours a week,” Ronalds said. “In some cases, not being busy spells disaster.”

Ronalds added that time in the weight room builds self confidence, and team unity is important in teenagers’ growth process.

But Hawk said football has something working against it that other sports do not: Players practice five times as much as they play a game.

That, combined with the generational practice attitude of Allen Iverson, leads to an unwillingness to dedicate one’s self to the sport.

At Palisades, Ronalds had just one freshman in the entire football program, which leads to concern for the immediate future. He is counting on the 25 or so in the middle-school program to limit it to a one-class aberration, as well as the success the last two seasons to get some of those freshmen who did not come out to reconsider.

Fear of injury

NFL violence is a real problem. Vicious hits are weekly highlights on the NFL Network and ESPN. Ronalds said parents and kids believe it is the same on the high school level, with concussions being the most feared injuries.

“I’m sure parents are withholding kids because of that,” he said. “They see a lot of those hits in the NFL and, I’m sure some doctor will argue with me, but (those hits) do not cross over to our level. Kids aren’t taking those kinds of hits.”

Palisades, which was 8-4 and reached the District 11 Class AA championship game, had no concussion reports this season.

With preseason baseline screenings and stringent protocol in place to help protect high school athletes from permanent brain damage, today’s players are a lot safer and more informed than previous generations.

“I probably had four or five concussions,” said Falzone, a former player at Catasauqua and Lafayette. “I was back to practice the next week, played in the next game. Now they are shut down for a couple of weeks.”

“It’s a different time,” added Southern Lehigh coach John Toman, a former Dieruff and Bucknell standout. “When I played, you rubbed dirt on (the injured area) and counted how many fingers.”

Greater knowledge has led to a safer environment for players. But, like many other things in society today, there are ways to trick the trainers and coaches, to manipulate the system.

Ronalds was told by a coaching peer about a few players saying they had a headache, felt nauseous or light-headed. That got them a week off.

“They are hot, tired and don’t want to work,” Ronalds said. “Then they learn they can’t play in the next scrimmage or game. All of a sudden, you’ve got 14 kids in street clothes who complained of headaches or nausea, and parents are worrying that their heads are turning to jelly.”

Toman’s son plays for a Salisbury youth football team. He said the best news those parents got this year was not about wins and losses or starting positions. It was about an equipment purchase.

“Taking that helmet out of a new plastic bag was a big deal to the parents,” Toman said. “There is a heightened sense of awareness. It’s not about the shoulder pads or the pads fitting properly to protect the thighs. It’s about the helmet.

“It’s going to be a dying sport. Kids are going to play something safer. We have to be proactive. If we don’t have the kids interested at the youth level, the numbers are not coming.

“As a sport, we need to be concerned.”

Lack of instruction

During Falzone’s playing days in the 1990s, practices were full contact unless it was the day before a game.

In 2013, Falzone’s Catasauqua team has had one live practice in 15 weeks so as to not risk injury.

That equates to fewer learning opportunities for the players, who in turn, are less prepared for the games. Also, backups who normally play in JV games, aren’t getting as many game situations to improve because of the forfeits.

And, when a varsity starter gets hurt, a backup with minimal game experience on any level that year gets the call.

“It’s why you can’t develop a program,” Pen Argyl’s Paul Reduzzi said. “We had two kids forced to play because of injuries on the offensive line. They didn’t get a lot of reps in practice because we don’t go live a lot. They didn’t get as many chances to play in JV games the last couple of years because of the forfeits.

“We had to change how we did things with them in practice for a few weeks to get them in a better situation in the games.”

Pen Argyl’s seniors won 39 games in their four-year careers. The Green Knights did so with only 34 players on this year’s roster — 14 of whom graduate.

Wilson, which had seven consecutive winning seasons (2004-10) and a state title under Bret Comp, won five games combined the last three seasons. The Warriors have roster sizes barely above 30 and now are without a coach.

Northern Lehigh, which became a steady winner under former coach Jim Tkach and current mentor Joe Tout, won only two games this season because of low numbers and a slew of injuries.

Southern Lehigh appears to be the current model program. Toman, who won just five games in his first two seasons in charge, has led the Spartans to six consecutive winning seasons. Numbers there are consistently in the 50s. They also are good at the lower levels, which means plenty of quality practice time and competition.

The eighth-year coach said that the canceled JV games haven’t been as much of a detriment to his program.

“The JV games sometimes don’t help,” he said. “They are better off at practice.”

Chuck Muller had more than 50 players on the varsity roster again this year at Notre Dame, which also had its best season since 2004.

A continental divide

There is a division among the 12 league teams as to who should play in the lower-level games. Four schools — Notre Dame, Pen Argyl, Palisades and Northern Lehigh — opted this year for a middle-school schedule, which includes kids in seventh and eighth grades.

The other eight schools conducted a junior high slate, which allowed those from seventh, eighth and ninth grade to participate.

In 2014, Bangor and Palmerton are switching to middle-school schedules for an even 6-6 split in the league.

Coaches have differing views about whether seventh-graders should be playing against ninth-graders. The result of that was few games at that level.

The four who conducted a middle-school schedule in 2013 had a hard time finding games each week, often resorting to playing the same program multiple times. The same was true of those competing in the junior-high league.

Again, roster sizes had a lot to do with points of view. At Southern Lehigh, Toman had about 35 at the junior-high level, so he encouraged seventh-graders to stay another year in the youth programs. The cooperation between youth programs and the high school coaches varies from school to school.

For others, small varsity roster sizes had a trickling-down effect. Some freshmen were brought up to the varsity roster and often competed only in JV games.

At Palisades, Ronalds had just one freshman in the entire football program, which leads to concern for the immediate future. He is counting on the 25 or so in the middle-school program to limit it to a one-class aberration, as well as the success the last two seasons to get some of those freshmen who did not come out to reconsider.

But success didn’t change things at Pen Argyl or Northern Lehigh. It likely won’t have an effect at Catasauqua.

Cycles of a small class or two are typical in every league, but it has a more profound effect on the Colonial League football programs.

Not having success also often works as a deterrent to today’s teenagers.

“I see that trending in athletics in general,” Hawk said. “If there is no success, they don’t want to be on the team. They have to have a reason to play.”

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